No vigor losing from the aid they give!”[80]
CONSTANT DISTRUST OF THE PRESIDENT.
Remarks in the Senate, on the Final Adjournment, November 26, 1867.
Thursday, November 21st, Congress reassembled, pursuant to the resolution adopted July 20th. According to existing law, the regular session would commence on the first Monday of December.
November 26th, Mr. Grimes, of Iowa, moved the adjournment of the two Houses on Monday, December 2d, at half past eleven o’clock, A. M. Mr. Sumner suggested “twelve o’clock,” remarking,—
I question whether we should leave even the break of half an hour between the two sessions. The point is just this: Will you leave to the President one half-hour within which he may take advantage of the absence of Congress, and issue commissions which would perhaps run—I do not decide the point now, but which, I say, might run to the last day of the next session?—that may be midsummer or autumn. I take it that an appointment during that interim of half an hour might possibly be valid to the last day of the next session of Congress.
Mr. Edmunds [of Vermont]. But the law takes no notice of parts of a day.